Collection Connection – Marie A. Hull, The Farmer

We are kicking off Home Essentials week with The Grace Museum’s painting (with a twist), The Farmer, by Marie A. Hull – coincidentally the first painting ever acquired by the Abilene Museum of Fine Arts. For national pet month we followed some of our museum friends at the #GettyMuseumChallenge and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art by “updating” our collection this week with special pet guests and a fun art activity. Marie Atkinson Hull was born in Mississippi in 1890. With no access to art education at a young, she got a degree in music from Belhaven College in 1909 – teaching piano and playing pipe organ for churches. A year after graduation she met and began lessons with artist Aileen Phillips with whom she studied until enrolling in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts – taking her mother along as a chaperone. Over the years Marie taught art in Mississippi, studied at the Art Students League of New York, illustrated books and magazines, and was very active in community outreach with the Mississippi Art Association. She traveled and exhibited extensively, winning many awards and growing her reputation as an artist. One of her “big breaks” came from her 1929 2nd place purchase prize win of the famous Edgar B. Davis Texas Wildflower Painting Competition. The prize money from that award allowed her to travel and study abroad. During the Great Depression she often traveled by train and would paint portraits of tenant farmers and servants and workers with whom she traveled. The Grace’s painting, The Farmer, is from her Depression series of sharecroppers from that time. LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST…